The Sacrifice

by Adele Wiseman

  “Well, yesterday afternoon he comes into the house and goes straight to his couch and lies down. What can be the matter with the child? Ruth comes in to him. ‘What’s the matter, Moishe?’

  “ ‘Nothing,’ he says to her. ‘I’m washing Dmitri from my head.’ ”

  Chaim laughed and clapped his knee delightedly.

  “Every word he catches.” Abraham chuckled. “Nothing escapes him. Jacob was like that.”

  There was a sudden commotion from the kibitzarnia. Laiah, her voice almost mannish in its indignation, swept out into the delicatessen, through the archway, and into the butcher shop, all the while calling back over her shoulder.

  “Vulgarians! The father’s a grobion and the son’s a grobion. The next time he’ll lose his hands! Just like that!” Her hair was slightly disheveled, and as she spoke she blew a strand away from her mouth. She brushed her hands angrily across her bosom, smoothing her dress. Her face betraying in her indignation a certain fleshy looseness of age, she whirled around at the door of the butcher shop, her eyes flashing past Abraham and Chaim and coming to rest on the little group of hapless men who had followed her out of the kibitzarnia. “What do you think” – she addressed Polsky – “that I’m your family nanna that you should all try to cut your teeth on me? Since when has he the right to paw me about in public?”

  Polsky spread his arms in a gesture of appeasement, but she had already whirled about, wrenched the door open, and slammed it shut behind her, leaving the bell to echo her indignation.

  Hymie emerged from the kibitzarnia, his arms hanging down sheepishly. “What does she think she is?” he muttered sullenly, his face confused, not meeting their eyes.

  The men turned on him. “What did you do? What did you do?” asked Mandelknaidel excitedly. “I was looking at the cards. I didn’t even see.” He almost moaned his disappointment.

  “For a one and only you’re not very watchful over your girl friend,” the other man said, laughing.

  “Well, you can see she doesn’t need watching,” said Mandelknaidel, sliding quickly out of the trap. Then: “But what did you do?”

  Hymie’s face was still a dull red. “Nothing. I just leaned over her.” His voice rose. “What did she make such a fuss for?” He particularly avoided his father’s eye.

  “For a minute,” said the other man slyly, “it looked as though you were trying to shuffle her cards. And she keeps them pretty close to her chest.”

  Mandelknaidel laughed with the other man enthusiastically.

  Hymie’s face ripened visibly. “So I just leaned over her. She’s old enough to be my grandmother. Who’s she kidding?”

  Polsky himself stood undecided as to whether he should laugh out loud, as he felt like doing, or bawl the boy out. He was aware that Chaim Knopp and Abraham were in the butcher shop, both of them trying to appear as though they were elsewhere. Best not to laugh. He felt a certain pity, not unmixed with contempt, for his son. Apparently to give him money and tell him to go and learn about girls had not been enough. He had noticed that there was something oddly restless about the way Hymie had hovered over Laiah. And then the clumsy swoop – and in full view. Could he have hoped to pass it off as a casual gesture? Or had he nerved himself for something and come loose like an ill-controlled spring? And Polsky was surprised that, with all the fresh little things around that his own eye sought yearningly, Hymie should pick Laiah for his sloppy assault. Just went to show that the old girl had something in her still. But he would give Hymie a talking to. He did not, inside of himself, feel quite right about Hymie trying it on Laiah. Her remark had hit home. In Polsky’s ill-defined morality there was something vaguely incestuous about the idea.

  Hymie was blusteringly trying to fend off the teasing of the older men. They don’t build them the same nowadays, Polsky told himself. He could not remember a time when he had been so callow.

  Suddenly Hymie changed his tack. “So I copped a feel.” He turned on Mandelknaidel, practically bellowing. “Bet it’s more than you ever got!” Hymie was taller than Mandelknaidel, and the little man stepped back quickly.

  Polsky’s loyalty was aroused. At least this was no jellyfish. “Listen,” he said loudly. “What’s it to make a fuss about? If you ask me it’s her change of life. She never used to be so touchy. They get capricious at a time like that. But it’ll blow over. She’ll be back. You’d just better stay out of her way for a while.” He turned to Hymie. “Women don’t like to be felt around in public unless they’re drunk.”

  Polsky had by this time steered them all back into the kibitzarnia, and here he felt free to laugh with them over his last remark. He laughed heartily, the laughter he had suppressed outside. Hymie looked as though he were getting ready to run out of the place. “It’s quiet out there.” Polsky addressed him after he had stopped laughing. “Abraham can handle things for a while,” he continued, not unkindly. “Maybe you want to take her place for the rest of the game?”

  Hymie glared at the others. In Mandelknaidel’s eyes he thought he detected a certain respect. “Sure,” he said, “if you can stop killing yourselves.” Dimly he began to recognize that it might make a pretty good story to tell his friends, one in which he needn’t necessarily look as foolish as he had felt at all.

  Chaim left the shop soon after. It was not right that he should stay around now, after what had happened. Some gesture on his part must be made to show that he was the Reverend Chaim Knopp, albeit retired, in front of whom all this had happened, even if there was no one left but Abraham to appreciate the gesture. He said nothing about this, but Abraham understood. Chaim took his leave ceremoniously, steadfastly refusing even to glance in the direction of the delicatessen, through which the four men had disappeared into the kibitzarnia.

  It was not until Abraham was ready to close up the butcher shop that he remembered Laiah’s parcels, left behind when she had flounced out of the shop. He mentioned them to Polsky.

  “A knife too, you say.” Polsky scratched his head. “Well, I can’t send Hymie, and the boy won’t be in till after supper. She said she wanted it before, eh? And if she doesn’t get it – mmmm! Look, Abraham” – Polsky had an inspiration – “she likes you. She isn’t liable to throw anything at you. How about taking it up to her, eh? I’ll close up the shop. I’d go myself, only, to tell you the truth, I’m afraid. She’s a mighty temperamental woman.” Polsky shook his head admiringly. “And of course,” he added hastily, “the kid’s a young fool.”

  By the time Abraham had reached the third-floor landing, and stood there resting for a moment he had repeated Polsky’s last words to himself half a dozen times. “Young fool,” it had been every time he paused for breath. “Young fool,” he muttered to himself vehemently for the last time as he punched the doorbell, for he was embarrassed and ill at ease. He was prepared to thrust the parcels at her and rush off without meeting her eyes, but he couldn’t do that. He must show that he was a more civil man than the Polskys. Still, he held the parcels out in his arms so as to be the more quickly relieved of them.

  He waited for a while, but there seemed to be no sound from within the apartment that his ears could catch. He bent over and was about to deposit the parcels on the door stoop when the door was wrenched open. He started back. Laiah stood looking at him as though she didn’t recognize him.

  “I was just going to leave.” Abraham held out the parcels again. “Polsky,” he added.

  Laiah’s face brightened; her full, mobile lips moved caressingly back over strong, predatory teeth. “Avrom! I wasn’t expecting you! But come in.” She ignored the parcels and stepped back into her hallway. “Come in.” She turned and walked through the short hallway and another room that was in semi-darkness, and finally into the kitchen, where the light was burning. He followed her, still holding the two packages awkwardly in front of him.

  “Oh, you didn’t close the door. Never mind, I’ll get it.” She brushed by him, and for a moment he was alone in the kitchen. He put the parcels down
on the kitchen table and turned to go back. Laiah swept into the kitchen again. “Sit down a minute, will you? I’ve just put the tea on. It tires you out climbing those stairs, doesn’t it? You’ll have a glass of tea with me.” And when Abraham remained standing: “Sit down, sit down.” She directed him, her hand on his arm, to a chair. It was as though nothing had happened. She showed no trace of her earlier mood, only delight at the unexpected visit of an old friend. But he was not an old friend.

  “You will have a glass of tea with me, won’t you? I was getting ready to have one all by myself. It’s lonely, drinking tea all by yourself in a dark house.” She made a gesture with her arm. “And I’ve been in such a mood all day.”

  Abraham wondered uneasily whether she was going to say more about the incident at the butcher shop. He half arose from his chair. “Well, I must get home for supper.”

  “Ah, I suppose you have your big meal in the evening.” Laiah had come around to lay a place at his corner of the table, so he was forced to fall back into his chair again. “I have mine in the afternoon. Then I just have a cup of tea and a bite in the evening. It’s different,” Laiah continued warmly, “when you have a family. Then your big meal is in the evening, and you all sit around the table together.” She laughed. “I haven’t had much family life. Still, I promise you I won’t press anything but a glass of tea on you so you can go home and eat. But you must at least be the first to use my bread knife, since you have renewed it for me. Will you cut me a few slices of bread while I pour the tea?” Laiah put the parcel of meat into her icebox, brought out butter, cheese, honey, and cookies, and began to pour the tea.

  Abraham, a little ashamed, conscious of his good fortune in having a family so that he need never ask a stranger in to tea for sheer loneliness, unwrapped her bread knife and cut the bread.

  “You’re very domesticated, aren’t you?” Laiah laughed as she brought him his tea. “You cut such nice thin slices.” She sat down then, at right angles to him. The folds of her housecoat brushed carelessly against his leg, and he moved away slightly.

  “A butcher learns to cut anything,” he replied.

  For a moment they drank in silence. Laiah watched him curiously. Abraham, unable to think of anything to say, kept his face bent down to his glass of tea. It occurred to her that she had once, a long time ago, said to Polsky jokingly, “Send me our friend Abraham sometime and we’ll see what can be done with him.” And Polsky had often teased her about the interest that she showed, when the fit was on her, in his butcher. Was this Polsky’s way of suing for peace, a joking reminder of an old joke? Her luminous eyes reflected her amusement at the idea. But it was doubtful. The Polskys, she reminded herself, were not a very subtle family.

  This Abraham must be at least twenty years older than herself. No, fifteen. Almost old enough to be her father, anyway – or so she would have thought once. When she traced it down, it was the beard that she liked. The first man she had ever known, a long time ago in the old country, when she had been a child almost, had worn a beard. She could recall even now the curious commingling of sensations in which the feel of his beard had played no small part. And he too had been fifteen – no, twenty – years older, probably more. Laiah shuddered slightly, not with displeasure. Abraham was studiously eating a piece of buttered bread. She noticed the crumbs on his beard. Crumbs must be a hazard for bearded men.

  Abraham’s eyes met her own reluctantly. “I haven’t had an easy life,” she burst out suddenly, a little surprised at herself. But after his first startled look Abraham’s eyes were not unsympathetic. “I know, I know” – Laiah brushed her hair back from her shoulder – “that it’s not nice, my telling such things to someone who’s practically a stranger to me. But somehow I feel as if we’ve really known each other, as if I can talk to you.”

  Abraham lowered his eyes and nodded. He didn’t want confidences. He wanted – he cast a furtive glance toward the hallway – to go home. What was he doing in this strange woman’s apartment, he who should be lying down right now for his pre-supper nap? But how could he just cut her off like that – someone, a woman like this, whom he had seen insulted, who suddenly wanted him to share her confidences? He didn’t know which way to look, particularly since the low-cut, loose bodice of her housecoat prevented him from looking directly at her. So he continued to nod his head into his glass of tea. She rose and refilled it, and he cast a sideways glance of thanks in her direction.

  But her next words seemed to awaken a memory in him, so that, forgetting her bodice, he could not help searching her face, as though for some clue.

  “My mother died when I was very young,” Laiah was saying, her voice deep and rather resonant, so that she did not have to raise it for him to hear her clearly. “I was left, the oldest, to bring up two others, a sister and a brother. My father was a worker without a trade. You know what that meant in the old country. He went about from town to town, trying to earn enough bread for all four of us.”

  Abraham nodded again.

  “At last he decided that maybe if he went to the new lands even he, the luckless, might be able to scrape together some of the gold off the streets. So he went. And we were left. For two years we didn’t hear from him at all. We dragged about, going from one aunt to another uncle to another aunt again. I went into service as a maid when I was twelve. Sometimes I had some luck; my master was kind to me and I was able to bring something home. At other times…” Laiah shrugged.

  Abraham nodded. His nodding distracted her somewhat, as though he were pacing out her words in a rhythm of his own. But his words reassured her. “So it was,” he murmured.

  “But that was not all. I wish that had been all of it.” She was surprised at her own eagerness to tell him. “I went as a maid to a rich family on a neighboring estate over the winter. When I came back in the spring I found that my brother had been used for rifle practice by soldiers passing through the town. He was nine.”

  “Ah,” said Abraham. “The same book.”

  Laiah smiled at him. “We have something in common, then?” she asked gently. He nodded. “Well,” she continued, “finally my father sent for us, all three of us. He didn’t know. He didn’t find out until we landed and came here, my sister and I.” She shrugged again. “And we found the New World. My father didn’t live long after we arrived. We went to work. My sister and I separated. She married and went East. I stayed here.” Laiah paused to drain her glass and remained pensive, a distant, somewhat ironic smile on her face. “Still, family ties call you,” she went on after a moment. “You want to know what has happened to people, especially as time passes and you are more alone. So I went East, two years ago. I found that my sister and I had not much in common. She had her family. She wasn’t interested in me. And I” – Laiah laughed and got up from her chair – “I somehow felt more at home here, even though I’m all alone, and it’s hard to be alone.”

  Abraham got up from his chair too. “I’m sorry, Avrom.” Laiah took his hand in hers and held it for a moment. “I’ve aroused bitter memories in you too, I can see it. We have both suffered. Someday perhaps you’ll tell me.”

  Abraham nodded vaguely.

  “Maybe sometime you’ll come in and have tea with me again,” she said. “But maybe you won’t want to come. What a hostess I’ve been, talking about myself all the time! Forgive me.” Laiah smiled her full-lipped smile at him over her shoulder as she preceded him to the door.

  At the door he remembered to thank her for the tea.

  “Thank me? It’s I who should thank you. It’s nice to know that you can talk to someone as to a friend sometimes.”

  Laiah closed the door on her guest. What had come over her? A discreet little tea party, a sad little tale. She did not usually remember those things. But it was so. Life had not dealt squarely with her. Her past woes, and the incident of the afternoon, which she was aware that she had handled badly, both combined to bear out this truth. Nothing had ever gone right for her from the very start. Laiah found h
er way to the couch in her bed–living-room and gave herself up to a storm of weeping, calling up again and again memories that would prolong the fit as it threatened to peter out. Finally, when she could weep no longer and merely lay sniveling comfortably, assorted memories of less tragic content flitted through her mind.

  She remembered again her first master and the sensation of his beard against her naked breasts, which had been large with her premature adolescence and so tender that his movements had traced themselves in fire. She had realized then, when she had pushed his head away and then pressed it down again with her hands, that she was as much his master now as he was hers. Laiah stretched herself on the couch and placed her hands on her breasts. There had been a pair of shoes for her out of that, and the next time a gown. And then a hat with a big green feather. And then – Laiah sighed – her mistress had sent her home. Never had there been a beard like that again. Rubbing her breasts gently, she wondered idly if another beard, even now, could reawaken that first delight.

  Then the scene of the afternoon, in the kibitzarnia, came into her mind, with the sensation of Hymie’s big, sweating body bent over her, and his hamlike hands. And suddenly she was laughing helplessly, and the tears were rolling down her cheeks again, and she was hanging tightly onto her breasts again for lack of anything else to hang onto. The stupid, clumsy fool! The animal uncontrol of his strong young paws. What else could she have done? In public, after all. And she had been carried away by the drama of the moment. Still, she was a little sorry now over the fuss.

  Still hugging herself, Laiah dropped off to sleep. She awoke feeling relaxed and contented, though a little weak. Her body felt as though it had been completely washed through. She was surprised to find that her legs were slightly shaky as she attempted to get up. But she was hungry again.

  While she ate she realized that the evening was young, and that she didn’t want to spend it alone. What if she turned up now at the kibitzarnia? Actually, where else could she go at this time of the evening? She would have to make up again to cover her swollen eyes, of course. But it would be amusing to see the look on Polsky’s face if she breezed in again this very evening. And Hymie’s face! Come to think of it, it was better to go back now. The sooner she went, the easier it would be. And this way they would probably be more embarrassed than she. She could let Polsky know that she thought it was very clever of him to send, of all people, Abraham as his peace emissary. Whether he had done it with the old joke in mind or not, he would pretend he had, once she mentioned it to him, to show his cleverness. And a Polsky flattered was a pleasant Polsky.